When the brilliant Blessing Muzarabani dismissed Matthew Renshaw while Australia were still 34 runs away from victory in Colombo, the 15,000 neutral crowd at Premadasa Stadium knew they had witnessed something extraordinary. Chasing 170, Australia was all out for 146 runs. Twenty-four runs less. The tournament favorites were humiliated by Zimbabwe, finding themselves in the exact same position 17 years later.
Australian team was defeated in Colombo
Zimbabwe players collapsed in a heap near the bowler’s crease, Sikandar Raza was crying openly, Brian Bennett – opening the innings with an unbeaten 64 off 56 balls – was pumping his fists towards the night sky as if invoking every ancestor who had suffered through the jungle years of Zimbabwe cricket. Stunned silence in the Australian dressing room. Pat Cummins stared at his shoes. Matthew Wade didn’t move. This should not have happened. Australia should not lose to Zimbabwe. Except that he has largely declared the 2026 T20 World Cup to be a tournament where the natural order of cricket makes no sense.
The Baggy Greens head to Sri Lanka as clear favorites to claim the title for the second time in five years, but online betting sites have surprisingly changed their tune. Latest Online Gambling Odds at 5Gringoz After losses to the hosts and weak Zimbabweans, Australia are now set at full strength at 25/1 to win the tournament, with India at 5/4. But the Australian team’s recent defeat is far from an isolated incident.
zimbabwe robbery Joined by a series of upsets that define the identity of the T20 World Cup more than any single champion. Since the inaugural edition of the contest in 2007, a lot of shocking incidents have occurred. Let’s take a look at the best of them and see which teams have really emerged from the underdogs.
Netherlands beat England at Lord’s
England vs Netherlands at home of cricket in 2009. Definitely one-sided. England, batting first, scored 162-5 – Ravi Bopara and Luke Wright made 102 inside 12 overs – and the Dutch had to chase down 163 at a venue where English dominance felt architecturally imperative, written in the pavilion’s Victorian brickwork. Except that Tom de Gruyth didn’t read that script.
He played an aggressive inning of 49 runs when wickets were falling around him and suddenly, Netherlands needed seven runs off Stuart Broad’s final over with four wickets in hand. chaos. Pure chaos. Ryan ten Doeschate faced Edgar Schifferli at the non-striker’s end, with 20,000 fans holding their breath.
Till the last ball, Oranje needed two runs to win and one run to draw. After ten Doeschate bounced the ball back to the bowler, Broad collected the ball and threw it at the stumps, attempting a run-out and bringing home the victory. Instead, he missed and simply watched in complete horror as the ball raced towards the boundary line. Four coups. Game over. The Netherlands won on the last ball in a more dramatic finish than could have been imagined.
The Dutch players stormed onto the field as if they had won the lottery – which, career-wise, they had. Most played cricket around day jobs, provincial leagues and borrowed facilities. This was his Everest, climbed in front of 20,000 astonished English faces at the spiritual headquarters of cricket. Insulting the British in the Lords. James Anderson’s three wickets meant nothing. Broad’s missed throw would haunt him for years.
England’s never-ending Dutch nightmare
But if Lord’s was dramatic, so was the brutal execution in Chittagong five years later. The Netherlands once again met England, this time batting first and posting a modest score of 133–5 on a slow surface. England needed 134 runs to win. Comfortable. Routine. Except that Mudassar Bukhari and Logan Van Beek didn’t get that memo.
The England team was all out for 88 runs in 17.4 overs. Not close. Not competitive. Complete insult. Bukhari claimed 3-12, Van Beek finished on 3-9, and the English batsmen played like Sunday League cricketers facing their first proper bowling. Michael Lamb was out after scoring six runs. Alex Hales was out cheaply. Jos Buttler managed to score six runs before Van Beek trapped him. Ravi Bopara—the star of Lord’s five years ago—failed again. Stuart Broad scored four runs. The middle order disintegrated. Panic spread. Shot selection went from bad to agricultural. Defeat by forty-five runs. Detailed. Crush. Career damaging.
Ireland’s MCG Masterclass
Another T20 World Cup, another England disaster-series. That’s what happened in 2022 when they met local neighbors Ireland at the prestigious MCG in Australia. Super 12 Stage. England are big favourites; Ireland is just happy to be invited to the party.
Amid rain threats, captain Andrew Balbirnie’s 62 off 47 balls – his maiden T20 World Cup half-century – took Ireland to 157, supported by Lorcan Tucker’s 82-run partnership of 34 off 27 balls. But Balbirnie wasn’t just scoring runs; He was calculating the DLS par score in real time, knowing that rain would come, ensuring that Ireland would be ahead at the required rate throughout.
Then Josh Little destroyed the England goal before it had even started. Jos Buttler was caught behind for a golden duck – a first-ball dismissal, a captain’s nightmare – on an away-swinger from Little that kissed the outside edge. Alex Hales slipped after scoring seven runs and dodging another swinger. England 29-3 after 5.1 overs, chasing the target in full swing. Little’s spell: 3-0-16-2, bowling with late swing and impeccable length which the England batsmen could not handle. Moeen Ali protested – 31 from 20 – but Ireland kept England at DLS level throughout.
When England’s score was 105-5 in 14.3 overs, rain arrived and the match was abandoned by the officials. Ireland won by five runs Beating their local rivals for the second time after their famous 2011 ODI World Cup upset in Bangalore, via the DLS method.
Afghanistan headed to semi-finals
The World Cup semi-finals are sacred ground. Over the years, only the big names had been able to make it here: India, England, Australia, all the regulars. In 2024, a new player entered the party and Afghanistan reached their first World Cup semi-final of any kind.
Their stunning upset of New Zealand in the group stage had already shocked the world. Then, when he repeated those heroics against Australia in the Super 8 after Rahmanullah Gurbaz scored a mesmerizing 60, fans at home in Kabul could barely believe what they were seeing. That win against the Baggy Greens was already the biggest win in Afghan cricket history, and they knew that a win against Bangladesh in their final Super 8 encounter would secure them a place in the semi-finals.
Afghanistan vs Bangladesh. The winner advances; The loser was devastated. Australia’s fate was placed in the hands of a little fish that they had barely acknowledged existed twenty years earlier. Afghanistan scored 115–5 before rain, with a revised DLS target requiring Bangladesh to score 114 runs to win in 19 overs. Gurbaz again top-scored with 43 off 55, anchoring under immense pressure, as his side collapsed from 84-1 to 93-5 in just 11 balls. Then Rashid Khan gave his masterclass.
The captain took 4-23 with the ball, tearing apart Bangladesh’s batting with the leg-spin wizardry that has made him cricket’s most recognizable Afghan. Naveen-ul-Haq matched him with 4-26, sealing the victory by taking two wickets in consecutive balls in the final over – both LBW, both plumb, both out, with Bangladesh’s batsmen knowing they had fallen short. Through Afghanistan. History was created.
South Africa would ultimately prove to be a bridge into the semi-finals as the Proteas secured a dominant win. But Afghanistan’s run to the last-four will go down in history as the greatest T20 World Cup effort ever, one the world will never forget.